


Silent Hill; Where Whores Go

by ImhereImQuire



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Silent Hill
Genre: F/M, Gen, Horror, Postseries, Violence, traumatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImhereImQuire/pseuds/ImhereImQuire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyrion never stopped looking for Tysha, and when he heard that she might be in the village of Silent Hill he has to make one last attempt to find her.</p><p>Set within the ASOIAF world, but taking on the broader mythos of Silent Hill as a place for people who cannot let go of the things that haunt them, within the setting rather than being a modern au.</p><p>No knowledge of Silent Hill is required, it works just as well as a nightmare, ASOIAF horror story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Hill; Where Whores Go

He never found out where the picture came from; a charcoal landscape of a town with no real distinguishable features save what appeared to be the edge of a lake. He awoke with it in his possession after a night of heavy drinking and might have thrown it out had he not thought to turn it over. It bore no address  but he knew it was meant for him.

‘ _Silent Hill’_ It said, in the same smudged black as the rest of the picture. A place name, presumably.

Then, underneath the neat labelling, scrawled in an awful, angry red….

‘WHERE WHORES GO.’

It had been the fuel for the dying embers of his obsession, and he had spent months trying to find the place. Men had heard of the town, it transpired, and many were quick to vouch for its existence though none had gone there and few could agree on its location. One swore he’d passed the road for it between Highgarden and Oldtown, another said it was somewhere up in the north, but eventually Tyrion found it between Casterly Rock and Golden Tooth, and even drunk so long and so often as he was he had to wonder – if it had always had its site in the Westerlands then why had he not heard of it before?

Too many unanswered questions, but none of them meant a thing; he knew in his aching heart that Tysha would be there, and he meant to go to her.

When Tyrion left he didn’t tell anybody, nor did he take even so much as a token retinue. He didn’t want to frighten his Tysha with more soldiers, not after all that they had known together. No, this was a thing he needed to do alone.

The fog which swallowed him as he rode up the rough earthen road had an odd tang to it. It tasted of ashes though he knew it was not smoke; it was too pale and did not burn his lungs as he inhaled it, but rather left them unpleasantly cold.

It was not the only sign that this place was nothing natural. There was a stillness which was unnerving, a complete lack of breeze or bird, or any sign of life within the mists, and though the houses which line the main street were neither burnt out nor boarded up he has the feeling that he was entirely alone in the town; that anyone who lived here had not so much packed their things and left so much as vanished.  He dismounts to better study the well maintained yet completely abandoned fixtures of a town.

It was impossible to say when the townsfolk had left, for the signs contradicted themselves; the forge was empty but the fire continued to burn, which spoke of a minutes past desertion, but the butcher’s eaves displayed carcasses that had long since festered, and been picked at by beasts or crows.

It was at the exact moment that he had noticed that they were not the carcasses of animals that he saw a flash of blue wool from the corner of his eye, and yes it disturbed him that those were corpses swinging in the wind, naked, and skinned to expose their bones… but it was the same blue that she had been wearing the day that they had taken her from him, and he didn’t hesitate to chase it as it darted between two houses.

“Tysha!” he bellowed, certain it had to be her. “Tysha!”

There was never more than a shade of her in the fog; a flash of dark hair, a swish of blue and white, but he knew it to be her, and he pursued her as fast as his stunted, aching legs could carry him, and it was never fast enough to catch her but nor was it slow enough to lose her and as he came to the mouth of a cave he didn’t hesitate to follow. “Please, wait. Just for one moment… please?”

Something is crouched inside, and for a moment he thought it was her, for the light was dim and the shadows concealed it well… but nothing human moved the way that that did – nothing that should not already be dead, for the limbs swung as though the tendons had already been severed, or had never been there to begin with.

Its eyes had been replaced with silver stags and its cloak is soaked with so much gore that it was impossible to see the cloth beneath it, but he knew instinctively it would be red; dark, Lannister red, and when it drags itself toward him Tyrion’s eyes narrow. This is no dream that he is in; he knows that for a fact, and some rational voice inside himself tells him that he should run, but he can not. If he ran then he would have to live in a world where this thing still existed, and he could not bear the idea of that, and so he held his ground as it half stalked, half staggered towards him.

The noise it makes when his pick connected with its groin is both grotesquely sexual and disgustingly familiar and with that sound, any urge to retreat leaves him. This thing has to die, and when it jerks forward with groping, grasping hands the size of dinner plates he throws himself into the blow; burying steel into skull. It goes down twitching but not silent, and he has to place his foot on its skull and push down to dislodge the pick before the damned thing goes still and the blood began to pool from its wounds.

He should feel elated to have survived such a battle, but all he is left with is a sense of contamination and the irresistible compulsion to run as the corridor walls, once solid stone, begins to flake and peel like kindling before a flame.

What lies beneath is living, pulsing… bleeding and in that pulsating mass of flesh, twisted children attempt to pull themselves free; ugly awful little things with sharp claws and barbed flesh which tear the walls as they writhe and squirm their way into this nightmare world, naked and blood drenched and screaming.

Tyrion runs and he runs, throwing open wide door after door until eventually the sponge like squelch beneath his feet becomes something less yielding, and the walls are stone once more and no longer bleeding. He doesn't want to go any further, he thinks to himself suddenly. There are things in the dark beyond the walls of this small chamber and he has no stomach for them, but he continues because he knows he must, that destiny or justice awaits him, and so he slides open the bolt from the door facing him and crosses the threshold into the next room.

He knows where he is then, but the familiarity brings him more dread than comfort.

The Hall of Heroes.

His heart pounds and he feels as though he might lose his water, but there is nowhere to go but forward, and he knows he needs to press on, and so he passes the hell’s rendering of the tombs of relatives long since dead – the familiar stone biers replaced with twisted metal grating that he does not stop to look inside. He does not want to see the blood soaked leonine beasts that swipe at him through their bars, nor to focus upon their too human faces, or the bizarre mixture of agony and disappointment that greets his eyes.

Tysha will not be here he tells himself, as he forces himself onward.  And he can not die here, not without seeing her, and so he keeps his eyes focused upon the doors.

He should have been looking up, it emerges, when there is a soft, sucking splat from above. Melting flesh pours itself from the ceiling and falls in messy pools around him like tallow or molten glass.

How he had managed to ignore the smell of seared flesh he doesn't know, but now it is all he can breathe and it sickens him, each rise and fall of his chest a battle not to gag. This isn’t fair, he thinks with a sudden, half hysterical laugh. If a dwarf has no nose then how can he smell?

By the time he has straightened himself from his retching and turns to face it the collection of blackened bones have shifted and rearranged themselves behind him, breaking the surface only to be covered again in something which is nothing near human.

Dragon’s fire did that, and he had sold them both to the Targaryen queen, who had condemned them to a death by burning that he knew secretly terrified Jaime and had done since he’d seen the older Starks given to flame.

They had put themselves back together now though; his siblings – Westeros’ most notorious lovers made inseparable,  he thinks to himself almost idly as he watches the flesh bubble and flow between them.

“Jaime…” he whispers hoarsely, and his brother’s head swivels, coming away from Cersei’s with a wet, suckling sound.

“Tyrion. You’ve come home.” It is not Jaime’s voice though, nor Cersei’s either but some strangeness which falls between their two pitches, more guttural than anything either of them could have come out with in life. “We can be together now…. You, and us… and the children.”

A body falls from the ceiling, and he has to dart back to avoid being crushed beneath it. Joffrey falls open, leaking something foul and poisonous which eats into the floor like acid.

He takes another step backward and another, seeking the doors as the second body falls in front of him, then the third, bursting like rotten fruit.

The twins come toward him, flowing about their fallen dead, and he still had the pick in his hand he won't raise it, can’t raise it. He’s killed them once after all, and a Lannister always paid their debts, why should they not have their vengeance? He should die here, he thinks to himself. It is more than he deserves, to die in the hall of his ancestors. But he remembers the flash of blue and white which he had followed here, and he could not. Choosing Tysha over his family a third time, he swung the pick high and let go, watching it embeds itself into the skull of his brother.  The thing which is and is not Cersei lets out a scream, and the whole thing begins to collapse upon itself.  One could not live without the other he remembers as he quietly watches, unable to tear his eyes from the thing which had been family until it had finishes its death throes.

When he pushes open the heavy doors he is once more back in the open air. The silence remains but the fog has retreated to the distance and nothing threatens him as he makes his journey down the deserted pathway toward the lake he had seen in the picture.

When he comes to the pier there she is; sat with her back to him with her feet in the water, dark curls escaping messily from a loosely tied plait in her hair, and for a long moment he can't breathe.

For a long moment he can't speak, can’t breathe and doesn'tt know what to do. Over a decade he had sought her, and now she is here he can't find the words to say.  What if she is but some nightmare construction? What if it isn’t her… or worse yet, what if it was, for how could she fail to hate him now?

“Tysha?” he managed, eventually and she looks over her shoulder.

And smiles.

“Do I know you, my lord?” she asks, confused. She is every bit as beautiful as he had remembers, her eyes large and round, her nose dabbled with golden freckles, but she doesn't know him, that much is clear.

“No… no.” he doesn't know if it were a lie or not, but he wants it to be true. He wants to come to her afresh. 

“You seem familiar… but everything is so strange here and I don’t remember anything.” She turns her body toward him. “Oh, you’re crying!  Would you like to sit down? “ she asks and his knees almost gave beneath him but he manages to lower himself sit by her side. Her compassion is startling and the fact that in this nightmarish world she does not look at his face and think him one of the monsters is so.... her. 

He never gets up again, and he would not have wanted it any other way, for what else in the outside world was there that could be compared to this?


End file.
